The Real Tina Fey

You know, the one who made television funny again, the one with the stiletto words. We sat down with her recently and tossed her some red meat and let her words go to work — on men, women, cursing, writing, her breasts, Mark Wahlberg's breasts, that Sarah Palin impersonation, and much more.PUT TINA IN YOUR POCKET:Get the Free New Esquire App Now >>

The best doughnut? That's Peter Pan doughnuts in Brooklyn. It's a Polish bakery. We shot nearby once for 30 Rock. Its white-cream-filled powdered doughnut. And I really believe, when I first tried it, if I had a penis, I would put it in this doughnut. I finally understand what you guys are thinking about and what motivates you guys.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

My four-year-old daughter has a pretend hair-and-nail salon, and I was doing her hair and makeup. I said, "Hello ma'am. What's your name? And what do you do?" And she said, "I get paid to dance at parties." And I said, "Oh, no. That's a terrible, terrible answer."

James White

She says she looks like Barack Obama. I think she heard so many people at that time saying I looked like Sarah Palin, I think she was just trying to get in on that. "I look like Barack Obama." Okay. Sure.

It's an honor to work with Mark Wahlberg's nipples in Date Night [which opens April 9]. They've been in a lot of amazing movies and music videos. I'm actually impressed the director, Shawn Levy, got him back to Shirtless Town. Because obviously he's done some serious movies since he was a Calvin Klein model. He doesn't have to give us the nipples. I don't know if it's that his nipples wanted to work with Steve Carell [with], or maybe his nipples are fans of The Office. But they showed up. No, I couldn't see the third nipple. And I was paid to stare at them for a day.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

James white

Date Night isn't just for married people. It's for all people, regardless of race or creed. If you liked Avatar? Imagine Avatar but everything is 2-D, and everybody's not blue.

The difference between male comedy writers and female comedy writers is that the male ones are taller and weigh more. They also fake-rape each other more. Female comedy writers pretty much never fake-rape each other. The women comedy writers do not urinate in cups around the office.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Sometimes guys like to have an excuse to take their penis out. I've said penis twice in this interview. What's happening?

James White

There are a couple of things I want to impart to ladies who want to be in comedy: One, you don't have to be weird or be quirky to get your job done. And two, comedy skill is not sexually transmittable. You do not have to sleep with a comedian to learn what you're doing. Male comedians will not like that advice, but it is the truth.

Twitter seems like a busman's holiday: just more writing. I have no plans to do it. I'll just stick with my 24/7 webcam. I'm old-fashioned that way.

I got a fan letter on the back of a prison menu. And I remember thinking, Well, they get pie. It's not so bad. They get pie on the weekends. I want to say blueberry and also a Boston cream pie. Not so bad.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

James White

My daughter wants to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She's a pretty violent Belle. She'll come in and say, "Gaston is hurt. I've killed him with a sword."

There was an episode where Frank plays this high-pitched sound that only people under forty are supposed to hear. There were internerds who were like, "I could hear the first sound, but I couldn't hear the second." And I was like, "Buddies, there was no sound." It's like that old SNL William Shatner sketch where he was at a Trekkie convention and was saying, "Have you ever kissed a girl?" The amount of thought — I love it, but I'm also concerned for these people.

I wrote a play when I was in Chicago — it was before I learned that plays had to have stories in them — and I wrote one about Catherine the Great. And she was lamenting the fact that she got bad press, and she said she did all these things, but then "you sleep with one horse and you're a horsefucker for life."

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

James White

I really love cursing a lot. But as I get older, I realize it's a little unseemly for women of a certain age. But then once you pass sixty-five, you can hit it full tilt again and it's charming. Once you're Lauren Bacall's age, you can be like, "What the fuck."

"Shark farts" was one that we ad-libbed that we ended up leaving in. The studio asked us not to leave it in, but we left it in.

We have a new one we're going to try out. You never know if it's going to stick. It's an expression of extreme shock: "Whuck?"

I do like to use nerds in real life. Just because I try to stop cursing around my daughter.

Plots we would not do on 30 Rock? Let me put the Internet at ease: Liz and Jack will never be together. Not even if we go fifteen seasons. Okay, if we get to season fifteen, they'll do it.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

James White

Don't be too precious or attached to anything you write. Let things be malleable. For sketch writers, remember they're called sketches for a reason. They're not called oil paintings. Some of them are going to stink. You have to let them stink.

Someone once said that to make a regular person laugh, you need to dress a guy up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. To make a comedy writer laugh, you have to push a real old lady down the stairs. I don't know who that's attributed to. I think it's Aristophanes. Or Catherine the Great.

I spent a lot of time performing for people who did not want to see any kind of performance, let alone one from me. I'd get hired to do an industrial, and I'd be doing sketch comedy at 8:14 A.M. in a hotel ballroom while people were eating breakfast, and the content of the sketch material was to let them know they weren't getting dental insurance anymore.

Which is what made the Sarah Palin situation so strange. I was like, "I've never been in a situation where someone wanted me to do something. Somebody actually wants me to do this?"

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.